Anyone else like Vacuum Tubes

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I like using them on everything I can use them on. They put out more power, it's why TV and radio broadcasters use vacuum tubes in the transmitting towers, they have to, transistors don't fit the bill quite "yet"..

But me, I listen ONLY to tube sound, I refuse to listen to transistors anymore, especially when they fake the bass through a heavy EQ...

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Only two tubes because it's a headphone amp, don't need so much amplification..

I play electric guitar and I prefer tube amps.

TV and radio stations use vacuum tube amplifiers for other reasons as well. The cut-off and saturation
points on a tube's operational curve are not as abrupt as with transistors therefore only the even numbered
harmonics are produced so there is less 'noise' and distortion being generated at high power.

Are those 12AX7's in that headphone amp or something else in the 12A*7 series of tubes?

It's not exactly 'real bass' that you're hearing with a tube amplifier so much as it is signal compression when you crank the amp up loud. FWIW, I happen to play electric guitar, and have a bunch of tube amps for that purpose.

You may or may not know this, but it's practically impossible to find any mainstream music who signal has not been passed through a piece of tube gear at some point during the tracking/ production/mastering process.

One piece of gear that many top Mastering Engineers use is a Fairchild 670 series Vari-Mu compressor, which is a piece of legacy tube gear from the late 1950's / early 1960's. They have not been made since the 1960's and because of the high regard, high demand/limited supply, they sell for well upwards of $20K.

I'm a tubehead, and love restoring tube equipment for myself and others. Such beauty in the simplicity of their circuitry.

I like that headphone amp--I need to get one of those.

They are 6AK5's.. More specifically, the Chinese version, 6J1..

I'm replacing them hopefully soon with Western Electric 6AK5's, military grade..

Be careful--some of those"mil-spec" tubes were s***e. I went through at least half a dozen JAN 6189's (12AU7) until I found two that weren't microphonic out of the box (and I'm talking about a filament buzz--never mind any external excitation), or which didn't become such within two weeks of installation.

In my particular case, they were Philips/ECG branded, with EIA date codes from the 80's.

I hope you have better luck with WE.

I used to have an amp with some 6L6s and some (I think) A34s.

I once owned a Leslie cabinet with a quart-sized tube that had a glowing nimbus inside it...oooo...

Man I had no idea so many of you were here....

I used to be into CB when I was younger. I built a 100W CB and freeband amp with one QQE 06/40. That was a thing of beauty. It required 750V plate voltage. Shocked the s**t out of me not once but twice. I was holding onto the chassis and accidentally touched the plate with my other hand, like a dumbass I was.

I have a CB in my car..

Wow, aren't vacuum tubes mostly considered obsolete by now? You must have quite a lot of trouble finding them. I don't imagine they are very cheap either.

Hard to use the attchments without them

Not hard at all, and not expensive.

Tubes are still used, and will continue to be used, for specific reasons.. Audio is one field they will remain in quite a long time.

Been to a concert? They use tubes on those power amps (not all the amps).

I LOVE THEM! I collected old tube radios as a kid, and still have several, including a seven tube black dial Zenith from 1939. I also have a collection of NIB and NOS tubes. I have one of the last vacuum tubes made in the US, along with examples of Svetlana, Sovtek, Tesla, and EI (Electronska Industrija from the former Yugoslavia that are no longer made since the factory was destroyed in the wars). I also have antique tubes. I have an unopened Zenith tube box from the 30s, and an RCA Victor tube in a box with Nipper on it (very rare and desirable now!). I have many 1950s-70s examples as well. I stopped collecting around 2001, but I still have what I bought back then. For some things, tubes are indispensable, like radio/TV broadcasting. The finals HAVE to be tubes, after 60 years of transistors we still haven't invented a transistor that can be a final output to a broadcast transmitter.

Audio Circuits used in very high end condensor microphones, audio compressors and microphone preamps as well as some equalisers utilise tube circuit paths.

High powered radio and TV transmitters are also tube driven, but the tubes that are used in these do NOT look like your common glass bottle that lights up, and commonly have waterjackets to keep them cool.

Also, much more commonly guitar amplifiers of quality are still tube based circuits that aren't that much differant from 'classic' guitar amp designs from the late 50's and the early 60's.


One of the advantages of using tubes is that when your tubes die, all you have to do is switch them out with a fresh set, and when the new set is installed and properly biased your piece of tube gear is basically as good as it was when it left the factory. -- This is one of the reasons why transmitters, recording studio electronics, and guitar amplifiers from the 50's and 1960's are still being used regularly.


As far as the prices go, nearly all of the tubes used in guitar amps are still in production today. if they are not, it's usually a fairly simple matter of rewiring a tube socket and rebiasing a circuit to accept a common tube with similar values that is still in production.

NOS tubes can be fairly expensive if the demand for one is particularly high (Mullard EL34's, GEC/MO KT66 and KT88, GE and Tung-Sol 6550's, RCA,Sylvania and GE 6L6GT's as well as Mullard, RCA, Telefunken and Amperex 12AX7's are very pricey tubes, but for the most part a lot of 'oddball' tubes are quite cheap, as this link will attest.

Western Electric still has limited US production of 300B's that cost a fortune for a pair. RCA, Sylvania and GE still make high powered transmission tubes here as well, though Sylvania stopped production of general purpose tubes in the late 80's, and GE stopped in the mid 1990's.

EI was still actually producing tubes until late 2005. The reason why EI ceased production is in part because of the bombing in 1999, but mostly caused by the embargo that was in place in the early 90's, as well as the fact that they couldn't keep people in the factory during the civil war. Thei main problem after they were bombed was the fact that their QA was virtually nonexistant. Tube dealers in the EU and North America were discovering that the fail rates for 12AX7's during microphonics testing was %70 and >.

Western Eeectric now owns the EI factory, and was making noise about rejuvenating the brand.